Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill.
I am very pleased to talk to members of Parliament today about our party's opposition motion, which reads as follows:
That, given the Prime Minister's comments of Wednesday, February 20, 2019, that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is the appropriate place for Canadians to get answers on the SNC-Lavalin affair, and given his alleged direct involvement in a sustained effort to influence SNC-Lavalin's criminal prosecution, the House order the Prime Minister to appear, testify and answer questions at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, under oath, for a televised two-hour meeting, before Friday, March 15, 2019.
This is a very important matter. Essentially, the motion states that the Prime Minister is hiding his involvement in this case. His involvement is serious because it constitutes interference in our justice system. Some might even say that, in Canada, attempting to influence a judicial process is a crime.
This has been going on for just over two weeks, and in the past few days, it has become clear that the Prime Minister is a key player in this matter. We are talking about the Prime Minister of Canada. He is surrounded by important people who advise him and do his work on the ground behind the scenes, in an attempt to protect him. These people play a key role in the scandal that broke just over two weeks ago.
If the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights do not have an opportunity to question the Prime Minister directly, we will never know the full truth. He is hiding to avoid giving the real version of the facts.
For the benefit of those watching at home, I will now give a brief overview of everything that has been said in the House of Commons or in the media over the past two weeks.
This all began with a budget implementation exercise in which the Liberal government tried to sneak through legislation to allow for remediation agreements.
What is a remediation agreement? It is a way to prevent a corporation from being convicted of fraud or corruption. These types of agreements are also designed to protect the jobs of the people working for the corporation, so they are not penalized for management decisions that may involve corruption in some cases.
Rather than following the path of transparency and including this in a justice bill, the Prime Minister surreptitiously slipped it into a budget from the finance department so that no one could ask any questions.
In doing so, no parliamentarians from any party, including senators, could ask the justice minister any questions in an effort to improve the bill, which would have been the right thing to do, to see what the Liberals' real intentions were, or where they wanted to go.
Time passed, and on September 4, 2018, the director of public prosecutions announced that the government could not negotiate a remediation deal with SNC-Lavalin.
The director of public prosecutions is neutral, and she works closely with her legal experts and advisers. Under no circumstances should any parliamentarian attempt to influence her decisions. Apparently, the Prime Minister decided that the director of public prosecutions had not made the right decision. The former attorney general, who was also the justice minister at the time, endorsed and supported that decision.
Then, rather curiously, on September 17, 2018, the Prime Minister met with the former attorney general to discuss the matter.
In the days that followed, there was a blitz of meetings with very influential people and SNC-Lavalin lobbyists. They tried to influence the former attorney general's decision in the matter. On December 5, Gerald Butts, senior adviser and friend to the Prime Minister, pressured the former attorney general. As I pointed out, so did the Prime Minister, on September 17.
On December 19, Mr. Wernick, this government's top public servant, told the former attorney general, who should be independent and has experts to provide her with legal advice, that, in his opinion, she had not made the right decision. I said “in his opinion”, but I could say in the Prime Minister's opinion. I would like to point out that the director of public prosecutions confirmed this decision once again on October 9. The decision was confirmed on two occasions.
It appears that if you do not agree with the Prime Minister, you are wrong. That is when the monkey business started and pressure was brought to bear to try to change the former attorney general's mind. It was not enough to be told no. It was not enough to apply pressure. She refused to budge, and we all know where that landed her. After the holidays and before the House resumed, there was a cabinet shuffle. Suddenly, this justice minister, whom no one had complained about, lost her job just because she did not want to do the Prime Minister's bidding. She believed in her heart and soul that she had made the right decision. The Prime Minister and his advisers should never have pressured her.
That is what gave rise to what is now being called the SNC-Lavalin scandal. That is what the media is calling it. It is not an SNC-Lavalin scandal, it is the Prime Minister's scandal. That is the reality. We should be focusing on that and allowing the former attorney general to speak. She is asking to speak, but just an hour ago she refused to appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights because she would not have the complete freedom to give her side of the story. We will not know what happened. We will once again be left with a Prime Minister who hid the truth and was not transparent with people.
Then, there was a dramatic turn of events. After the Prime Minister blamed former minister Scott Brison for stepping down and said that what happened may have been his fault, and after saying that neither he nor his close collaborators ever interfered in the matter, we saw his principal adviser and close friend step down. He did not step down because he made a mistake. He said he stepped down because he did nothing wrong. That is incredible. No one here called for his resignation even though he was the Prime Minister's best friend and principal adviser. The fact is that he stepped down simply to protect the Prime Minister from the fallout of the major mistake he made in this file.
The strange thing is that the Prime Minister has given several different versions of what happened. First, he said that the allegations were false. Then he blamed the former attorney general for the confusion. He is shifting the blame because he is unable to take responsibility for his own actions. He said that the Ethics Commissioner's investigation would be enough to get answers in this case.
I would like to remind everyone that he is the only prime minister in the history of Canada to have been found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner four times. That has done nothing to change his behaviour.
He reminded the House that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is independent and impartial, but then he refused, via the Liberal committee members, to accept the proposals that the Conservative Party made to the committee.
What is more, the member for Mount Royal said that it was the former attorney general's fault because she did not speak French. Those same members make a huge deal about trying to defend French. Everything that we have heard is rather unbelievable. The story has been changing every day for the past two weeks, and we still do not know the truth about this scandal.
I would like to remind members that this scandal is not about SNC-Lavalin, but about the Liberal Prime Minister. It is an obvious failure. The election is approaching. Canadians have the right to know the truth about this matter.
Lastly, according to Jean-Claude Hébert, it is obvious that the Liberal government committed a serious parliamentary blunder by inserting such changes into the Criminal Code via a federal budget implementation bill.
We need to shed some light on this matter, and we expect the government and this Prime Minister to tell Canadians the whole truth.